Kei Otautahi ahau e noho ana

The title means "I am currently staying in Christchurch" in maori. I just took my Maori final in which I had to speak Maori with the teacher. The test was worth 40% of the class and went very well.

A few notable things have happened since Country Life Weekend.

Last Saturday, I went to my second Canterbury Rugby game which was fun. Zanne, Nick, Laura, Matt Kelly, Kate Davidson, and Shelby Combs were there.


That night Katie Wright and I hosted a bit of social drinking between the hours of 8 and 2. At about 2 o'clock Katie called up her boy Harry who told us some horrifying news. Our flatmate Alice had been wading in the ocean up to her knees and was sucked into the water by some huge undertow. After ten minutes of searching for her and not hearing her cries, our friends called the cops. By the time the cops showed up Alice had managed to swim ashore. She claims she was swimming her hardest for about twenty minutes before catching a few waves well enough to get out. Harry asked Katie and I if we could grab Alice's keys, go find her car, and pick her up from the hospital to which she'd had an ambulance ride. I was fully sobered up so we grabbed the keys and looked for the car which was described by harry as "a little white banger". Believe it or not, the key unlocked the first car we tried.

I drove stick shift with my left hand and on the "wrong" side of the road down to the hospital which was just a few Ks away. I had a blast. Driving stick is great and Christchurch is super flat so it was easy. We found Alice and took her home. She's 100% fine. Whew.

By that time it was already about 3 or 4 and Katie and I had to get up to go rafting at 9. We nearly missed it. For some reason neither of our alarms went off. And we had both remembered to shift our clocks forward an hour the night before!

Rafting with the IFSA crew was great.

I'm all the way on the left.


Here's one of my raftmates. The guide's name was sam.


In this next one I'm the blue helmet in the front... I'm sitting across from Dale who has the red helmet. We did mostly level 2 and 3 rapids but this one was class 5.


Though our raft never flipped or dumped anyone out, one of the rafts did flip on the level five rapid leaving all of the members except the guide swimming. Shelby Combs wound up in a brace from thigh to ankle. For a while they thought her leg was broken but we've found out it is alright.

I spoke to one of the guides about the incident afterwards and he said that one of his whitewater kayaking friends had traveled the world kayaking but after coming and doing these exact rapids and getting flipped upside-down and crashing into a few rocks, he gave up whitewater kayaking for good.

At the end of the rafting trip we had an option to jump off a cliff 30 feet into the water. Most people did it. I opted to go first.. my picture is the only one that came out like this. In the rest of the pictures the person is blurry and the rocks are clear.


Yeah so now that all that exciting stuff is out of the way we can talk about simpler stuff.

I cooked up pad thai for a few of my friends. I'd never done it before and it turned out really well. Yum! Chives and bean sprouts!



My first New Zealand mead was enjoyed on Wednesday by lots of my friends. I wanted to get it finished so that I could get another together before going away for my North Island trip. Though racked multiple times, a good amount of yeast stayed in solution which was a shame. Anyways, I've just put together more mead tonight. This mead has KIWIS in it and is made of part-manuka honey that i got at the farmers market. YAY. I hope to bring a sample of this mead to the honey vender down in Lyttleton.

I gave the mead to Dale this time to take care of as I'm going away for a good while starting tomorrow morning. I will be catching a flight to Wellington and renting a car to tour the North Island with my friend Rachel. We'll be staying in lots of huts, eating lots of scroggin, and checking out the geothermal activity up there. At one point we will be staying at a Kiwi orchard run by friends of Rachel's father! Near the end of the trip we will be doing the Tongariro Northern Circuit. That link's a description of the tramp and here's a map. It's supposed to be exceptionally scenic. One of the volcanos we will be walking up and around was used as Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings.

Expect lots of awesome photos and stories when I get back on October 12th.